Missions and Boobs: A Group Project Inspired by the Internet

What led you to this blog? Did you click on a link from Facebook or google something that offered you one of my posts? As the author of this blog, I’m always interested in what leads people my way, and there are two major themes, two vastly different topics that lead the average Google searcher my way. Missions and boobs.

What.

What on earth do missions and boobs have in common? Apparently this blog, because when I sift through the Google search terms that lead people here, they fall into these two categories. Let me give you some example search terms people google that lead them here:

Missions

“why should a missionary know the culture of the community he wants to visit”

But what about the boobs?!? Well, my most popular post is “Dating for Moms,” and I guess when you write about full frontal hugging and booby mashups, you end up with booby googlers on your site. Here are some of the search terms for my blog, the least-shocking ones:

I’m not sure what a “bad mom boobs moment” is, but if it involves a rambunctious nine-month-old nurser and a displaced Hooter-Hider, then I’ve had it.

As I kept tabs on what’s driving people this way and noticed this pattern of mission-boobs, I started wondering what those two things could have in common, besides my blog, and I came up with a truly cool idea. If my blog is a destination for missions and boobs, why not make a mission out of boobs, and indeed, feminine care? You see, whenever we’ve gone to our CarePoint in Uganda, we’ve had conversations with the older sponsored girls and the women running the CarePoint. They ask for two things, hesitantly, quietly. They need bras and sanitary pads.

On our trips, we’ve run errands to the local market for bras. My plan is always to let my friends in Uganda guide us for what they need, not what we think they need, and when one of the women grabbed her boobs, lifted them up, and gestured to a friend’s bra, we got the message.

My heart and passion is to keep these kids in school, receiving a full education so that they can become the leaders the community needs to rise out of poverty and to do it themselves. And the girls in the village are strong, smart, and willing to do the work.

I’ll never forget when the girl my brother’s family sponsors took me on a walk and asked if I had any menstrual pads. We were talking about school, and I couldn’t understand why the non sequitur. What do pads have to do with school? Apparently a lot. When they get their periods, without the proper hygiene products, they have to miss school. Imagine missing school several days out of each month simply for having a female body.

The HopeChest program with which we partner is about holistic care, meeting all the needs of a child, from physical and mental to spiritual, and with our girls, part of that care is serving them as young women.

That’s where this blog, this search-terms-of-missions-and-boobs blog, is perfectly suited to help. We care about missions and boobs here at Unexpected.org. We care about girls staying in school and learning and growing into women with dignity.

When I approached HopeChest with an idea for getting bras and pads to our girls in the sponsorship program, we talked about collecting supplies or collecting money, and the fact is, it’s better for the local economy for us to buy the bras and pads there. Whenever we can, we try to support local Ugandan businesses.

So…

I’ve coordinated with HopeChest to create an entirely new fund for our Ugandan CarePoint, and since you know I love double entendre, it has the best name ever. We’re calling it “Support Our Girls.” (See what we did there?!?) This is a microgiving campaign, which means we’re not asking for anyone to give a lot of money. I’m looking for a couple of pumpkin spice lattes’ worth of giving. If we all donate a few dollars, we can reach our goal of $1,000, and HopeChest has even created a little thermometer that we can watch go up.

I love microgiving, because the burden isn’t on any one of us. It’s just a bunch of people doing something little to create something big together. So if you have a little extra coffee money this month, I’d love it if you’d join us in our first ever exclusive Unexpected.org fundraiser.

And if you have teen and tween daughters, this is a great way to get them involved in helping their peers. Any girl in school with her period will understand the importance of pads and bras. They could get a babysitting job one evening and donate a portion of the money or get some friends together and organize group childcare. The moms and dads drop off the kids to have a night out, and part of the money raised goes to Support Our Girls. Or they could collect change from their coffee shop study group or cross country team.

So this is our goal for October. Our first ever Unexpected.org group project. Are you ready?

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A friend of mine was doing something similar but they are sewing reusable, washable menstrual pads with snaps (kind of like the “wings” on Always) that can be used dozens and dozens of times — provided they have water to wash them in… I thought that was also a neat concept. I can’t imagine how inconvenient it would be. I’m guessing in more rural areas, the girls are married off at 13, and having babies and lactating for 10 or 15 years straight, and rarely having menstrual cycles, but when they have the option of going to school, it’s so good to know that there are ways to help them out.

Melanie Dale

They don’t have the washing facilities to handle that in a sanitary way, but what a good idea for communities that are equipped for that!

Lynne

Great idea. Happy to donate and share.

Melanie Dale

Thanks, Lynne!!! I appreciate you.

Bee

Brilliant. As a larger breasted young woman I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing! I can’t donate right now but I will be giving you a shout out on social media. All to often this sort of issue isn’t thought about by missions teams/NGOs/aid orgs and the people being helped are too shamed to ask (it speaks to the efficacy of your model that they were comfortable enough to!).

Melanie Dale

Oh, thanks so much, Bee! Our girls and widows at the CarePoint are so fabulous and I think the fact that we’re building an ongoing relationship where the ministry is local, present, and listening has really helped. I’m just humbled to be part of it.

Sara Newberry Harms

oh, i love this! i love meeting REAL needs, and in really easy ways! and i found your blog through the link on Jen Hatmaker’s site…of all the ones i checked out that day, yours is the only one that i’ve kept coming back to. similar humors for sure =)